Check this mess.

Due to a budget shortfall running either near or well into (depending on who you ask) the NINE figures, the Philadelphia School District faces a massive restructuring that will strengthen the role of charter schools and private corporations in the local education market. I’m not going to speak directly to that problem, and the problematic solution on offer to fix it, but I want to point out that the apparent logic behind the plan is markedly similar to that behind the attack on the tenure system currently underway at colleges and universities across the country, as well as the concomitant push toward online education. Jonathan Rees writes about this, well, just about every day, and the situation is actually not entirely unlike the mess going on just across the Delaware River, as Rutgers’ Camden campus and Rowan University are being combined into a single institution. It’s a race to the bottom, y’all!